


here be dragons

by robotsdance



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A quest!, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Camping, F/M, Hiking, Magical Realism, a dragon only Jaime and Brienne can see, canon-typical sibling incest, cersei lannister/jaime lannister - Freeform, join me in the notes for more detailed warnings, mutual failure to disclose reproductive choices/status
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26321047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsdance/pseuds/robotsdance
Summary: Jaime is the only one who can see the dragon. The piece of shit dragon that swoops and glides around his life like it has nothing better to do.That dragon.He’s gotten good at ignoring it. Because it can’t be a dragon. Whatever it is, it can’t be a dragon.Anyway, Jaime is the only one who can see the dragon.Until he isn’t.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 145
Kudos: 358





	here be dragons

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to slipsthrufingers for the beta and also for sending me the dragon emoji at least a thousand times.
> 
> Warnings for sibling incest, abuse, and mutual failure to disclose reproductive status/choices in the context of that toxic and abusive relationship.

It’s Wednesday. Jaime is grabbing lunch across the street from his office. The man behind the counter blushes a little as he prepares Jaime’s usual.

When Jaime collects his sandwich he opts to eat on the patio. Not because he wants to, but because there isn’t a free table inside. Whatever. At least it’s sunny out, even if it hasn’t quite reached warm.

When he sits down outside the sun shifts behind a cloud big enough to cast the whole street into shadow. Because of course it does.

Jaime looks up and allows himself an exasperated sigh.

Because it’s not a cloud blocking out the sun for Jaime. No. Of course it isn’t. Of course it’s not a cloud. No. Because a cloud would make sense. So it’s not a cloud.

It’s a dragon.

That piece of shit dragon.

The dragon moves overhead without a sound, flapping its great wings, casting shadows on the skyscrapers as it moves through the sky. A giant scaly jumbo jet of a thing.

No one notices.

Not a single soul looks up and exclaims, “Dude, what the fuck????” No one screams. No one pulls out their phone to take a picture.

No one notices the dragon.

Except Jaime.

Jaime notices.

He pretends not to.

Because it might be a dragon.

(And it is definitely a dragon.)

But it also can’t be a dragon because that’s ridiculous.

So he just ignores it and goes back to his sandwich.

*

Once upon a time he considered the possibility that the dragon was a manifestation of his guilt over killing Aerys but ten seconds after the thought occurred to him he knew whatever the dragon was it couldn’t be _that_. For starters, he doesn’t remember the first time he saw the dragon, but he’s sure it was before all the Aerys stuff happened. Second of all, he doesn’t feel guilty about killing Aerys. Not at all. Not even a little. He would do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. There is no guilt in him when it comes to Aerys.

There is, however, a dragon.

A very large dragon.

That circles around the city and surrounding area like it’s the dragon’s day job.

*

(It does not escape him that Aerys, that pyromaniac, thought he was a dragon, that he would come back as one, that he was destined for great fiery things. Aerys was also insane. Jaime tries to focus on that. Jaime tries to focus on that and not focus on the dragon. He’s quite good at it. He’s had a lot of practice.)

*

It’s Thursday and he can see the dragon flying out over the water. He regrets having an office with a decent view. Why couldn’t the adjacent building be higher? Surely some condos could be built between his office and the waterfront? He’s spent most of his life ignoring the dragon, but it would be easier if it wasn’t so fucking visible.

He turns in his chair and refuses to take his eyes off his laptop for the next several hours.

*

He leaves the office early because he’s been there late all week and heads to the gym.

He loves this gym. This hole in the wall of a gym. Where most of the equipment he cares to use is in the basement.

Which ensures his workout will be 100% dragon free.

Thank the gods.

*

Before you or anyone asks, yes, Jaime has a therapist. Who he sees fairly regularly, thank you very much. And he is outrageously expensive and kind of a dick, but he is a good therapist, supposedly.

He hasn’t made the dragon disappear, but Jaime hasn’t been entirely forthcoming about the dragon. Not exactly. (In his defence, Jaime told his previous therapist about the dragon. It did not go well.)

(Sometimes the dragon makes a point to fly around the therapist's office while Jaime is in session. Because, and Jaime cannot stress this enough, the dragon is a piece of shit.)

*

What is perhaps most concerning is that the dragon barely cracks the top five reasons Jaime is probably not the most mentally stable and healthy person. Like, an imaginary dragon looming over his life? Not even that big a deal. It’s manageable. Extremely manageable actually. Especially in the grand scheme of things.

It’s just a dragon no one else can see.

It’s fine.

Jaime is fine.

*

It’s Friday evening when he gets the text. The ' _He’s not going to be home tonight'_ text. Followed by the ' _Come over'_ text.

So he goes over.

(He pretends not to notice the pattern in when Cersei summons him, but he had been expecting a text late this week. Had come home and showered after work, assuming it could be tonight.)

The dragon is visible in his rearview mirror every time he glances at the road behind him.

*

Cersei sets her glass of wine aside when he opens the door and then drags him up to the bedroom. (The bedroom she shares with her husband.)

He comes inside her because he doesn’t want her to ask him why he didn’t. Because he doesn’t want to fight about it. Not again.

When he leaves and drives back to his place in the early hours of the morning, the dragon is there.

The dragon is always there.

*

It’s Sunday morning and Jaime is out for a run. He was up before sunrise, was out in the park before even the most enthusiastic dog walkers.

The dragon is low in the sky to the east, rising with the sun like some great phoenix.

But it’s fine.

It’s fine.

It’s nothing he hasn’t ignored before.

Jaime runs a little faster and puts the dragon from his mind.

*

It’s Monday and he has to take a quick plane ride for some meeting that couldn’t be an email, but could definitely be a video conference.

The first thing he does when he gets into his seat is pull the blackout blind down over the window.

He doesn’t care for flying.

And he certainly doesn’t care to see the dragon cruising alongside the plane for the duration of the flight.

At least the dragon keeps its distance.

(At least it did the last time Jaime made the mistake of looking out a window during a flight.)

*

When he gets off the plane he doesn’t look for the dragon. That fucker is definitely around though. The dragon is never far from him. Even when he travels, the dragon comes along too. Because why the fuck not? Sometimes a few days will pass without Jaime seeing the dragon. He used to get hopeful. Like maybe the dragon was gone for good.

But no. Just when he allowed himself to hope, there the dragon would be. Off in the distance or up on one of the mountain tops or right overhead.

So Jaime just ignores it.

This is his life.

Just, going about his life.

Like there isn’t a dragon.

Because there isn’t a dragon.

There can’t be a dragon.

(There is definitely a dragon.)

*

It’s Tuesday and Jaime is in session.

Today they’re talking about his love life.

“You’re still seeing her?” his therapist prompts. “The married woman?”

“Yep.” He lets the end of the word pop out of his mouth. “Still fucking the married woman.” He’s been fucking her since long before she was married. He continued fucking her after she got married. He will continue to fuck her for the rest of his life. Nothing to see there. His last therapist insisted this showed his fear of commitment. Jaime kept pointing out that he is entirely committed to her.

“It might be useful,” his therapist says. “To use her name when you are here.” He then goes on to cite confidentiality policies and tell him that this is a safe space for him and whatever.

“I’m the one who’s here,” Jaime says, framing his refusal in concerns for her privacy, “Not her.”

“You are the one who is here,” his therapist agrees. “So what brings you here today Jaime?”

“My four o’clock appointment.”

The dragon flies past the window.

*

It’s Wednesday again and he can’t remember whether he saw the dragon or not at all today, but it doesn’t matter because he’s descended the stairs to the gym, which means the next two hours of his life will be blissfully without dragons of any kind.

Gods he loves the gym.

She’s here again today.

She’s been around a lot, whoever she is, not that Jaime has noticed.

She’s just noticeable, that’s all. She’s six-foot-a lot. Taller than Jaime for sure. Big and broad and blonde. She looks like she could bench press him if she cared to try.

Today she’s over in the corner with one of the punching bags.

She’s punching the absolute shit out of it.

She could definitely knock the shit out of Jaime if she wanted to.

So yeah, Jaime’s noticed her.

She’s noticeable.

So what.

*

Jaime lingers in the gym shower for reasons that have everything to do with enjoying a few more minutes of a dragon free environment and nothing to do with enjoying the ambiance of cracked tiles and the threat of mildew with a soundtrack of bros loudly discussing how much they lift.

*

When he exits the gym the noticeable woman is there, waiting for a bus it looks like, her hair still wet from a shower, her gym bag slung over her shoulder.

The dragon is also there. Because the dragon is always there.

Right now the dragon is out over the water, where it often is in the early evening as the sun sinks lower and lower in the sky.

Jaime looks back at the noticeable woman in an effort to ignore the loop the dragon is currently flying and his heart stops.

She’s not waiting for a bus.

She’s watching the dragon.

*

There’s not a cloud in the sky. No birds. No planes. Nothing. Nothing but a giant beast of a dragon, skimming along the surface of the water before rising high into the sky.

There’s nothing else out there for her to be watching.

Nothing.

And he is desperately looking for something else she must be watching.

(Her gaze follows the path of the dragon precisely.)

*

Nothing in his lifetime of practice ignoring the dragon has prepared him for this.

That’s his manifestation of… whatever, flying around out there.

Why the fuck can she see it?

*

Jaime watches the dragon fly straight up into the sky before stretching its great black wings out as far as they will go, then it glides off towards the east.

By the time the dragon is halfway back towards the hills, where Jaime can only assume it sleeps when it isn’t tormenting him, she is no longer standing where she was.

He looks back and forth in a rush, eventually spotting her across the street.

He runs after her.

He runs right into traffic actually, but it’s still rush hour, so it’s not like the stop and go traffic is going anywhere right now. Still, between the cars honking at him and the guy who leans out his window to give him a piece of his mind, Jaime is hopeful the ruckus will give her pause before she turns the corner out of sight.

No such luck there.

“Hey wait!” he shouts when he gets to the other side of the road and runs after her, not caring that people are staring at him. He pushes past a few people at the corner waiting for the walk signal when he can still see her blonde head, towering above the rest of the pedestrians.

“Hey!” he shouts again as he dodges and weaves through the crowd and runs after her until finally (fucking FINALLY) she stops and looks over her shoulder to see what idiot is screaming his way down the sidewalk behind her.

But he’s running towards her looking right at her so she gathers she’s the one he’s shouting at pretty quick. She does not look pleased by this.

Still, he runs until he’s standing right in front of her.

“You can see it,” he says, wasting exactly zero time. She can see the dragon. She can see the dragon.

“See what?” she asks.

He tilts his head out towards the dragon. Emphatically.

It still takes her a beat to catch his drift.

And then she looks suitably unsettled. Finally.

“You can see it?” she asks, her voice dropping whisper low, as if the people walking around them on the sidewalk might infer what kind of _it_ they are talking about.

“Yes.” Gods he can feel this conversation running in circles already, “I can see it.”

Of course he can fucking see it. He’s the only one who can see it.

“But that’s my…” she trails off.

Her what? Her coping mechanism? Her imaginary friend? Her manifestation of… whatever? Wait. Does she know? Does she actually know? Can she tell him? “Your what?”

She glances around before she answers, barely moving her lips when she says, “My dragon.”

“Your dragon?”

“No one else can see it,” she says, a little defensively. A lot defensively actually.

“I can see it.”

“Why can you see my dragon?”

“Why is it _your_ dragon?”

“Excuse me for referring to a dragon only I can see as mine,” she fires back in a tense whisper. “I suppose you think it’s yours?”

Jaime has never considered the dragon in those terms. It was always The dragon. Not his. He does not want a dragon. He does not have a dragon. He has a manifestation of… whatever, sure. But now that he thinks about it…

Why the fuck can she see his dragon?

*

“Look,” she pauses for a moment as she looks at him.

“Jaime,” he supplies in the space he assumes his name should be.

“Jaime,” she continues. “I have to go. I’m late for a thing.”

“A thing?” What thing could be more important than this? Is the fact that they can both see the same imaginary dragon not more important than anything she could possibly be late for?

“I have to go,” she repeats.

“But you can see it.” She can’t go. She can see the dragon. The dragon. He needs—

“Jaime—”

He tries to cut her off with her name, but realizes he doesn’t know it. All that comes out is a nondescript sound of disbelief.

“Brienne,” she provides.

“Brienne,” he implores. “You can see it.” He has no further argument. He doesn’t know what that means, but it means something. It means something and he needs to figure it out.

“I have to go.”

He watches her turn and walk away.

*

When he gets home he shuts all the blinds in his condo. The dragon is over by the hills for now, but he doesn’t want to see if it starts to move around again tonight.

Jaime paces from room to room instead of eating dinner.

Brienne can see the dragon.

Brienne can see his manifestation of… whatever.

His dragon.

She can see it.

He paces until well into the early morning and then he lies awake.

Brienne can see the dragon.

And if Brienne can see the dragon…

*

It’s Thursday.

The dragon swoops around like a drunk bat half the afternoon.

Jaime goes to the gym after work.

He doesn’t run into Brienne.

*

It’s Friday.

The dragon is overhead when Jaime goes to the gym first thing in the morning.

He doesn’t run into Brienne.

The dragon is to the south when Jaime goes to work.

The dragon is still there when he goes back to the gym after work.

He doesn’t run into Brienne.

*

It’s Saturday.

The dragon does dragon things.

Jaime spends most of the day at the gym.

He doesn’t run into Brienne.

*

“Brienne!” he says, rushing up to her as she’s about to enter the gym when he’s on his way out. He’s already late for work but it’s been almost a week since he last saw her. Almost a whole week where every gods-forsaken day he looked up and saw the dragon and knew that she could see it too.

“What do you want?”

“Just wanted to let you know I’m going to go find the dragon,” he says. “This weekend.”

“What do you mean find it?” Brienne asks as her eyes narrow. “You don’t need to find it. It’s right there.”

Then she points at the giant dragon in the sky above them. Subtlety. Just one finger on one hand raising to gesture towards it.

“I mean find it. Up close,” he says. “It sleeps somewhere over there.” He tilts his head towards the hills to the east. “And I’m going to go find it.”

“Why?”

He gapes at her.

She just looks right back at him, waiting for him to answer.

(The dragon changes course ever so slightly, drifting to the north as its tail ripples behind it like the ribbon of a giant fanged kite.)

“Don’t you get it?” Jaime bursts out after far too long without her putting it together. “If you can see it too, that means it’s real. Or real enough.”

“Real enough for what?”

“To die,” Jaime says, like it’s obvious. Because it is obvious. He’s been thinking about this a lot. It’s all he’s been thinking about. He can’t slay an imaginary dragon, but if Brienne can see it too, it’s realer than he ever dared hope.

“You want to kill it?” she says, like she must have misheard him.

“Of course I want to kill it.”

“Why would you want to kill it?!”

“Because it’s a dragon.”

“So?” Brienne says, like that is her whole argument. When she realizes this isn’t enough she adds, “It’s not hurting anyone.”

“Not yet.”

“Why do you think it will?”

The smell of gasoline and smoke overwhelms his senses, making it hard to think. “Why do you think it won’t?”

“You can’t kill it,” Brienne says. “Even if you want to, there’s no way you could.”

“I can fucking try,” Jaime replies. “And I’m going to.”

“I won’t let you.”

“I’m not asking your permission.”

“So why did you tell me at all?” she asks. “You could have just gone and tried to kill the dragon on your own, which you can’t by the way. There’s no way you can kill the dragon just because you want to. But you’re telling me to, what? Give me a heads up that you’re an idiot?”

“I thought you’d want to come with me!” Jaime bursts out.

In the silence that follows that statement he realizes that is, in fact, why he felt he needed to tell her.

He’d assumed she’d want to find the dragon. He’d assumed she’d want to destroy the dragon once and for all. He’d assumed she’d want to come with him.

It is clear he has made several grave miscalculations.

“You want me to come with you?” she asks.

“I thought you’d want to!” he says, realizing his mistake but unable to keep the frustration from his tone.

“Fine,” Brienne says.

“Fine?”

“I’ll come with you.”

“You’ll… what?”

She adjusts the position of her gym bag over her shoulder as she looks down at him, “You want me to come with you to find the dragon? Fine. I’ll come with you to find the dragon. I will not, under any circumstances, let you harm it. Are we understood?”

“As long as you understand that when we find the dragon, I’m going to kill the dragon.”

“You will not,” she says. “Though I look forward to watching you try.”

*

Brienne is very insistent that she’s been looking forward to this workout all day, so if he could just stop thinking about murdering a helpless dragon for the time being, that would be _swell_.

Jaime wants to follow her back into the gym so they can continue this discussion, but he just finished his workout and he doubts very much that she would let him hover around her while she did her thing.

But she lets him give her his number.

*

They exchange only a handful of texts between then and Saturday morning, when he drives to the gym to pick her up.

(He’d offered to come pick her up at her place, she’d insisted the gym was probably for the best. He can’t really blame her for not wanting to give the man she barely knows who wants to kill a dragon her home address.)

She’s waiting for him with a large backpack resting against her legs and a flannel shirt tied around her waist when he pulls up and parks beside her.

*

“So what’s the plan?” Brienne asks without saying hello when he steps out of the car.

“We go up the mountain. We find the dragon. I kill the dragon. Then I live a peaceful dragon-free life for the first time in my fucking life.”

He walks around the car to open the trunk so she can toss her bag into his car.

She clocks the rifle in his trunk and rolls her eyes. “Have you ever fired that before?”

He hasn’t.

He closes the trunk.

*

“You can’t kill a dragon with a bb gun,” she says as he pulls back out into the near-empty road.

“It’s not a bb gun,” he snaps.

“Have you ever been camping before?” she asks as she glances at the pile of gear in the backseat. He’d taken the price tags off, but there’s no disguising the fact that everything, from his backpack to his boots, is in pristine condition.

She glances at him, and then looks out of the window and grins.

“What?” he asks.

“This is going to be more fun than I thought.”

*

They’re just merging onto the highway when the sun starts to break over the horizon.

To the east, the dragon rises.

*

“I figure it will take two days to get to the dragon,” he says, citing the research he has done.

There are marked trails on the lower part of the mountain.

The dragon seems to sleep somewhere just over halfway up.

They follow the trails to the highest elevation, and then keep going up from there.

He’s done the math. Two days to get to the dragon. Kill the dragon. Two days to get back.

(And for the record, it is not a _mountain_ mountain. The top isn’t snow-peaked or anything. They don’t need a professional mountaineer to figure this out. They just need to walk up a big hill. Basically.)

“You packed more than four days of food right?” Brienne asks.

“Yes.” The person helping him at the camping gear store had been very insistent that Jaime over-prepare, as evidenced by the frankly enormous backpack bursting with everything he could possibly need in the backseat, from a pocket knife to a headlamp to four separate pieces of navigational equipment. “Why, did you?”

“I’ve got at least six days worth of food,” she says. “Plus snacks.”

“It won’t take that long.”

“I’d rather be prepared,” she says. “Forgive me if I didn’t take you for the backcountry type. What are you anyway, an accountant?”

He’s not an accountant, but he does work for a bank.

He does not want to get into the distinction right now.

*

The dragon is barely visible out to west when he parks his car at the start of the trail.

Brienne puts her backpack on while Jaime changes into his newly purchased hiking boots. He checks his phone and finds several messages from Cersei telling him to come over tonight. He doesn’t reply and puts his phone back into his pocket and looks back to Brienne.

She’s watching the dragon while she waits for him to be ready, so he slings his enormous backpack on and picks up the rifle and says, “Let’s go.“

“It feels kind of stupid to be walking away from it,” she says, but she gestures towards the first trail marker, letting him lead the way.

“It’ll come back,” he says.

“I know.”

*

They’ve been walking about an hour when Brienne takes the lead and Jaime falls in step behind her. Well behind her.

His backpack is already too heavy and his water, which was icy cold when he left the house, is already starting to warm up, and his new boots are unfamiliar and stiff on his feet, but really, it’s just walking. And it’s nice to get out of the city and walk somewhere that isn’t the park by his place or the sidewalks.

Jaime could almost enjoy this.

*

The rifle is cumbersome to carry. It has a strap, but with his backpack on it doesn’t rest on his shoulder without him holding the strap in place, which kind of defeats the purpose of it having a strap.

Which means he has to hold it.

Which means every time he wants a drink of water or a snack or to reapply sunscreen and bug spray or anything he has to stop and put down the gun or try to hold it under his arm while he digs through his stupidly big backpack.

About thirty feet ahead of him Brienne is walking through the woods unhindered by a rifle with a useless strap. She’s picked up a branch and is using it as a walking stick. Every so often she reaches for her water bottle in a seamless motion that does not require her to dig through her backpack at all.

They’ve been on the trail for about three hours.

*

They snack as they walk, as if that will make up the time they seem to be losing by the minute. The forest is thick enough that he cannot see anything beyond the woods.

Jaime has not seen the dragon since this morning.

Jaime cannot remember the last time he was somewhere that obstructed the dragon from his sight so successfully for such a long stretch of time.

*

They keep walking. It’s probably Jaime’s turn to lead, but Brienne seems to prefer to walk ahead of him so he doesn’t make a point to switch.

He’s vaguely hopeful that by letting Brienne go first the mosquitos will get their fill before he comes along fifteen paces later, but so far that has not been the case.

(He’s thinking about the dragon.)

*

(He’s still thinking about the dragon.)

*

“How long have you been able to see it?” he asks.

“What are you doing?” she asks without turning around. She doesn’t need to turn around.

“I’m asking you a question.”

“About my dragon.”

“It’s not like I can ask anyone else about it,” he says.

“Nothing I tell you will help you figure out how to kill it.”

“Gods,” he says. “I was just making conversation. We’re going to be stuck out here for a few days. I figured we might as well chat about our shared delusion.”

“Is that what you think it is?”

“I don’t know what it is!”

“It’s a dragon Jaime.”

“And that doesn’t concern you?!” He does not understand Brienne at all, not even a little bit. “You can see a giant mythical beast that no one in the world can see, and you settle on ‘it’s a dragon’ and just go about your life?!”

“I never really had a choice,” she says. “Did you?”

*

“I don’t remember the first time I saw it,” Jaime tries again. Several more kilometres are behind them. At least one blister is starting to form on his foot. “The dragon. I don’t remember the first time I saw it.”

Brienne says, “Okay.”

“I was a kid,” Jaime presses, “I remember seeing it as a kid.”

“That’s nice.”

He looks at the bits of sky beyond the trees and suppresses the urge to groan in frustration. “Did you see it as a kid?” He asks directly. A yes or no question. Surely she can manage that—

“Look, if you’re trying to prove that you’ve seen the dragon for longer than me or—”

“I’m just curious!” Jaime exclaims. “Gods! You’re the only other person who can see the dragon. Forgive me for wanting to know a little more about you!”

“Forgive me for not trusting someone’s whose first instinct upon learning I can see the dragon is to _want to kill my dragon_ ,” Brienne says. “Why would I tell you anything about it?”

“Because I can see the dragon too!”

She does not find this to be a compelling reason to talk to him.

*

The next 10 kilometres pass in near silence.

Sometimes they agree to stop for water and snack breaks with as few words as possible.

Once she asks if his brand new boots are starting to break in yet.

She doesn’t sneer when she says it or anything, but he’s pretty sure there’s an edge of judgement in the question.

*

The evening shade of the trees is becoming more pronounced as they mutually agree to make camp here, despite being well behind where Jaime thought they would be.

Jaime knows Brienne notices the dragon fly overhead, but she does not mention it.

Jaime does not mention it either.

*

The drive out took longer than he thought it would.

The first leg of the hike took longer than he thought it would.

Setting up his tent for the night is taking longer than he thought it would.

Brienne doesn’t say ‘I told you so’ but he can feel her thinking it.

And she’s thinking it a lot.

Loudly.

*

Dinner is a quiet affair.

Brienne had already cooked and eaten her meal by the time he’d gotten his tent set up and laid out his sleeping bag. She offers him the fire though, which Jaime sits beside as he eats his less than inspired meal.

The dragon drifts overhead the whole time, because of course it does. The clearing in the forest they’re in isn’t big, but it’s big enough to have a view of the starry sky above them, and the dragon is currently obstructing the view. Jaime busies himself with his GPS to avoid acknowledging that he has noticed it’s there.

On the other side of the fire Brienne leans back against her backpack and watches the dragon.

(Jaime redoubles his focus on his GPS in an effort not to acknowledge that he’s noticed her either.)

*

By the time he’s finished eating Jaime has concluded they aren’t more than three hours behind where he wanted to be. That’s not so bad.

What is bad is camping.

Jaime already has enough data to confirm that he does not care for camping. Not in general, and certainly not with Brienne.

Brienne who is still looking up at the dragon-filled sky.

*

Jaime is relieved when the dragon drifts out of sight to wherever it sleeps for the night.

And he is even more relieved when Brienne tersely wishes him a goodnight and retreats to her tent.

He douses what’s left of the fire and then does the same.

*

Tired as he is from a day of dealing with Brienne’s stubborn insistence on passing the kilometres as silently as possible, sleep does not come easy.

The sleep mat he lugged all the way up here is just a thin piece of foam that does little to make the cold hard ground any more appealing as a bed. And the more he lies awake, the more he thinks about why he’s lying awake halfway up a hill in the middle of a forest.

And the more he thinks, the more he realizes what Brienne has known all along:

He can’t kill the dragon.

He can’t slay a shared delusion. He can’t kill some morphed repressed trauma or a manifestation of… whatever with a rifle.

So they can both see it. That doesn’t mean it’s real. Because it can’t be real. ( _It’s a dragon_ , Brienne says in his mind, over and over as he lies in his sleeping bag, squirming to try and find the patch of forest with the fewest jagged rocks so maybe he can fall asleep, _It’s a dragon._ ) And Brienne is right. It’s a dragon. And dragons aren’t real.

So the dragon that flies over their campsite the next morning can’t be real.

It just can’t.

*

They get a decent start in the morning, eating and packing up their stuff and continuing onwards on the trail from the day before.

Jaime tries to make conversation.

Brienne does not.

*

“Can I borrow your After Bite?” Jaime asks when they stop for some water before embarking on the next narrow and rocky section of trail.

“My what?”

“Your After Bite,” he says. Of all the things that sales associate had sworn by, the little plastic tube of whatever it was that made bug bites itch less was the thing Jaime was most grateful for. “That stuff you put on mosquito bites. Mine must have fallen out of my pocket somewhere over the last few miles. I had this morning.”

“Sorry, I don’t have any,” Brienne says, sounding actually sorry about it, but then she adds, “I don’t react to mosquito bites.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I don’t react to mosquito bites.”

“Not at all?” Jaime asks in disbelief. His arms in particular are already covered in the damn things, but the mosquitos seem to be biting him through his clothes as well, despite the generous amount of bug spray he has been covering himself in.

Brienne shakes her head and his gaze travels down her neck and then across her arms. She’s covered in freckles, but there’s no angry itchy red bumps anywhere he can see.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jaime groans. He’s hiking through the woods with someone specifically immune to the worst parts of it? He adds Brienne’s immunity to mosquito bites to his growing list of things he hates about camping.

Brienne shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.”

Jaime frowns at her but that doesn’t stop Brienne from saying, “Oh look. A mosquito.” not long after.

And then she holds out her arm and lets Jaime watch it bite her arm before she smacks it, leaving a little smear of her blood on her pale skin. When she brushes the dead bug away there’s no sign of anything. Jaime would already be starting to swell but Brienne is fine. And when he looks at the spot just above her wrist where he knows she was bitten a little while later there is still no evidence she was bitten at all.

The injustice of this makes every one of Jaime’s bites itch even more.

*

The rifle is a constant thorn in his side.

His original plan was stupid beyond belief.

He can’t slay an imaginary dragon.

(But then that asshat of a dragon flies by, so low its claws nearly brush the top of the trees, and Jaime is filled with renewed determination to try to kill it anyway.)

*

Jaime spends the first part of the morning going back and forth on the matter as they trudge through the woods.

It is a dragon. It cannot be real. Therefore he cannot kill it.

Brienne can see the dragon too. That makes it real enough. Therefore Jaime must try to kill it.

It is a dragon. It cannot be real. Therefore he cannot kill it.

Brienne can see the dragon too. That makes it real enough. Therefore Jaime must try to kill it.

It is a dragon. It cannot be real. Therefore…

*

Either way he thinks, as he takes a sip of water and bats a mosquito away, either way they can both see it.

The dragon.

They can both see the dragon.

For the next hour or so he thinks about that.

*

They must… they must have something in common. Him and Brienne.

They must have something in common.

Something that explains the dragon.

Something.

*

“Have you always lived in the city?”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant to us walking through the woods together.”

“You didn’t, did you?” Jaime says. “You lived out east.”

He’s been thinking about it. He’s been thinking about the dragon. About what the dragon used to do. About how it used to move when he was younger. Before he moved to the city.

Brienne grunts. He takes that as a yes.

“I grew up out west,” he says, remembering how the dragon would come from the east, fly out over the ocean for a while, sometimes days, and then retreat back to the east. “And the dragon wasn’t there all the time. It flew out of sight a lot. For days on end.”

“That’s nice.” The way she says it implies she does not, in fact, think it is nice.

“The dragon stopped flying far to the west when I moved to King’s Landing,” Jaime says, thinking out loud because gods know his companion isn’t filling the silences. “But it didn’t stop flying east… not until… Until you moved to the city?”

“This isn’t going to help you kill the dragon.”

“You moved here, what?” he scrolls back through his brain, trying to remember when he noticed the dragon was staying particularly close to the city almost all the time, “Six months ago?”

She stiffens.

He grins.

*

As a small child, before he made the mistake of mentioning the dragon to his father, Jaime used to wonder where the dragon went when it wasn’t circling the shores of Casterly Rock. And now he knows.

The dragon went to where Brienne was.

*

They have the dragon in common.

They have the dragon in common but there must be something else.

He just has to figure out what it is.

He just has to figure out what it is.

He just has to figure out what it is.

*

He asks her about her job. (Security of some sort, she is not keen to discuss it further.)

He asks her about her family. (She had parents. She is not keen to discuss it further.)

He asks her why she moved to the city. (Because she did. She is not keen to discuss it further.)

He doesn’t bring up the dragon again. (He already knows where she stands on that topic of conversation.)

*

Brienne doesn’t ask about him in return. She doesn’t want to know about his job or his family or why he moved to the city or anything. She doesn’t want to know why he can see a giant-ass huge fucking dragon that no one else in the world can see but them.

Jaime’s not sure if he’s more frustrated by his inability to figure out what they have in common, or by the fact that what they most certainly do not have in common is their need to figure out why they can see the same dragon.

Brienne is infuriating. And she can see the dragon.

*

Whatever it is, whatever they have in common, he just has to figure out what it is.

Because when he figures it out… Whatever the reason the dragon is there… That could be the reason the dragon stops being there.

He can figure it out.

Whatever it is.

Whatever it is, that’s the key to making the dragon disappear.

*

It rains all afternoon and the very moment it lets up, every insect in the surrounding area flocks to them in a swarm so thick Jaime resorts to tying a bandana over the lower part of his face to keep them from flying directly into his mouth and nose. He’s got his rifle in one hand and an already depleting can of bug spray in the other.

The bugs are tiny and fragile and stupid. Beyond stupid. They die on impact, as far as he can tell. His front is covered in tiny black specs. What use is a bug that dies the moment it hits anything? They don’t even bite. They’re just there. Irritating the fuck out of him.

At least Brienne seems to be suffering as much as he is.

At least there is that.

*

By the time they make camp for the night he reeks of bug spray and sweat. They’ve (mercifully) made it through the deepest part of the woods and will be spending the night in a clearing about 250 metres from the river. There’s enough of a breeze to dissuade the bugs, and they seemed to prefer a different chunk of the forest anyway and Jaime isn’t an expert but he doesn’t care as long as he can breathe without filling his lungs with the tiny idiotic specs.

Jaime follows Brienne lead and sets up his tent before they lose any more light but the second he’s done he tosses his rifle into the tent and heads for the river.

He has the wherewithal to lay his backpack out on a large rock nearby and to take his pyjama pants and the bear-proof canister full of his food with him. (He will not be changing back into his damp bug spray soaked clothes afterwards, thank you very much, and the person at the camping store had been very clear in their instructions about food and tents and bears.) But once he’s taken care of the bare minimum, he is focused only on the promise of enough water to rinse himself off.

*

Jaime takes off his hiking boots (which he hates by the way) and then peels off the blister-preventing socks the sales associate swore by (that he also hates) near the edge of the river.

He weighs the pros and cons of stripping down further before he decides he doesn’t give a fuck and wades out into the river in his clothes.

The water is somewhere between cold and fucking cold but he already feels more human without several layers of bug spray and sunscreen and sweat and bugs and Seven knows what else all over him.

*

Brienne comes to collect water for her filtering system sometime after he has taken off his shirt and pants and flung them up onto a large rock at the shore, hoping they will dry before the sun is completely gone (he knows they will not).

She makes a point to walk upstream before filling up the bag and hanging it.

Then she walks downstream a few paces and sits on the edge of the river. She takes off her boots and shoes and then carefully rolls up the bottom of her pants before she puts her feet in the river.

*

Brienne is as stubbornly uninterested in talking with him about anything as she always is.

Fine. If she doesn’t want to share, he’ll share. He spent the better part of the day trying to get her to open up enough to start trying to piece together why they share their manifestation of… whatever. But he’s tired of trying to tread delicately around… whatever it is.

They’re both fucked up enough to see a dragon.

They’re both fucked up enough to agree to spend several days walking towards the dragon.

Whatever they have in common isn’t going to be a shared passion for beekeeping or having the same favourite board game as a child or both wishing upon the same magic star that they could see a dragon like in the stories.

No.

The dragon is a problem.

The dragon is a manifestation of… whatever. And whatever it is, it’s fucked up. He’s sure of it. This isn’t a happy story.

Brienne can see the dragon.

Brienne is as fucked up as he is.

So let’s get on with it.

*

“I killed a man when I was seventeen.”

She barely even reacts. She just glances over at him and says nothing.

“I said,” he repeats, a little louder this time. “I killed a man when I was seventeen.”

“Okay,” Brienne says, not taking the bait, not asking him if it’s true or why or anything. She just continues to swish her feet through the river, back and forth.

“Don’t you want to know why?” he presses. Because apparently she needs some guidance during the conversation.

“Fine. Jaime. Please tell me why you killed a man.” She says this in singular monotone.

Now he doesn’t want to. She obviously doesn’t want to know. She obviously doesn’t even believe that he did. Fuck.

He doesn’t tell her why.

He sulks in silence as he treads water. However she’s fucked up, it isn’t murder-related. Fine. He can work with that.

“I’m in love with my twin sister,” he says, watching her for any reaction as he says it. “And we fuck. We’ve been fucking for years.”

“Jaime—”

“And she’s married,” he adds. “And she’s trying to get pregnant with my child.”

“Jaime. Just stop. I know what you’re trying to do and it won’t work.”

“And what am I trying to do?” he sneers. If she’s so clever maybe she can just tell him why they can both see the dragon and save him the trouble of trying to figure it out himself.

“You think the dragon is a delusion or some winged collection of secrets or… whatever! And it’s not. It’s not a delusion and it’s not a manifestation of trauma that we happen to share.”

“How do you know that?! How could you possibly know—“

“Because it’s not. And I’ll prove it to you.” she stands up then, looking down on him from the shore with fury. “My mother and brother died when I was a kid. I barely remember them but I miss them every day. I grew up isolated and bullied because I was an ugly kid and I grew into an ugly adult and had people reminding me of it the whole fucking time. The first guy who ever asked me out did it to win a bet, which I found out later. After he’d won by the way. If I was a man I would have been offered scholarships all over the place and I’d probably be playing pro-something right now and not working security part time but I’m not so I am. Oh, and one of my best friends died in my arms last year and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”

Jaime treads water in silence.

“Is that enough for you to work with?” Brienne spits, “Or would you like me to go on?”

That’s enough.

That’s more than enough.

The dragon circles low overhead.

*

She’s still standing on the shore looking down at him where he is in the water. She’s said more meaningful things to him in the last minute than he has in their entire journey here and maybe… just maybe…

“My mother died when I was young…” Jaime says, trying to sound calm about it but there’s an edge of desperation in his voice he wishes he could attribute to the temperature of the water he’s in, but this could be it. This could be the reason. “I was a kid. And I don’t remember much…”

“I’ve been able to see the dragon since before my mom died,” Brienne says bluntly. “Since before all of that. So just stop. Stop.”

Jaime stops.

Brienne collects her things and sets off towards camp without another word.

For a moment, the dragon seems to follow her.

*

There is nothing he can say to Brienne to make the dragon magically disappear, Jaime concludes as he pulls his pyjama pants on and shoves his boots on his feet without tying them up. There is nothing Brienne can say to him to make the dragon magically disappear for that matter. He sighs.

He picks up his still-wet clothes (that still smell like bug spray but not as much as before). He wanders over to where he stashed his canister of food to pick that up as well.

He tries not to glance up at the dragon. (He fails.)

So the dragon isn’t a shared manifestation of… whatever.

That means Jaime can stop pouring energy into trying to make the dragon disappear.

And refocus on figuring out how to kill it.

*

He catches up with Brienne not far from the river. The two of them walk in the terse silence that has been their default for the last two days as they make their way back to their campsite.

The dragon swoops low as it flies ahead of them. Lower than ever before.

Gods, Jaime hates that fucking dragon.

*

When they get over the little hill before their campsite, Jaime sees her tent first.

Then he doesn’t see his tent at all.

“What the—” it starts as a question, but by the time the word “Fuck” has escaped him it is not a question at all.

*

“Did you leave food in your tent?” Brienne asks him. Accuses him. Whatever.

“No!” He didn’t leave anything in his tent. His backpack is right where he left it over there. His bear canister full of food is in his hand for fuck’s sake. He didn’t leave anything in his tent except for—

Fuck.

“Help me look for it,” Jaime says as he goes over to the big rock his backpack is on and stands atop it to better survey the surrounding area.

He expects her to protest, but she diligently starts to walk towards where his tent once was to help.

*

After ten minutes they have found only evidence his tent once existed. A few scattered shreds of red nylon caught on branches downwind of the scene of the crime.

“I think it’s safe to say your tent isn’t worth finding,” Brienne says as she picks up the biggest piece they have found so far, which is about the size of his t-shirt.

“I’m not looking for the tent,” Jaime admits as he stalks back and forth through some tall grass to her left. “The rifle was in the tent.”

“Oh,” Brienne says.

But a moment later she smiles.

Then very pointedly stops herself from smiling.

And then Brienne says, “What a shame.”

*

Jaime stalks off to gather branches to make a fire.

His rifle is gods know where.

His tent is a write off.

The dragon is still there.

He doesn’t want to talk about it.

Any of it.

*

They cook and eat their meals in silence.

The dragon has landed for the night, somewhere deeper in the woods, somewhere Jaime hopes they’ll be able to reach within another day’s worth of hiking. But at least he doesn’t have to make a point not to look at it as it flies around.

And he doesn’t have to watch Brienne sit back and watch it soar above them as they eat like she’s utterly unbothered that it’s a dragon. A dragon only they can see.

*

With food in his stomach things seem less dire.

All in all, it could be worse.

He has all his food. He has his backpack with all of his clothes and gear.

Jaime has everything. Except for his tent and his rifle.

He glances at Brienne’s tent.

All in all, it could be much better.

*

They watch the fire burn down to embers.

She yawns.

He yawns.

They stay right where they are.

His backpack is beside him.

Her tent is over there.

Apparently they aren’t going to talk about this either.

*

They don’t talk about it.

Not when she douses what’s left of the fire.

Not when she stands and takes her backpack back to her tent.

Not when he grabs his own backpack and follows her.

*

Her tent is bigger than his was. Wider for sure, thank gods, but they are still going to be two big people in a small tent.

She moves her sleeping bag as far as she can to one side and climbs back out of the tent so he has room to set up his stuff.

Her sleeping mat is thicker than his is, he can’t help but notice. He fixates on the fact that she gets to sleep a whole additional two inches above the unforgiving ground as he unrolls his own mat and tries to wedge it on the other side of the tent.

He has to tuck the side of his stupid sleeping mat under hers to make it fit.

*

When Brienne looks in through the opening of the tent he is already lying in his sleeping bag. He’s shifted as far away from hers as possible, but there’s no way she hasn’t noticed that even now, their sleeping bags are touching.

He gets the feeling she’s fighting the urge to sigh as she crawls back into her tent and zips up the flap behind her.

*

She gets into her sleeping bag more efficiently and gracefully than he has managed so far, but as she settles beside him there’s no escaping the fact that this tent was not meant to hold two people of their size.

He shifts away from her as much as he can, determined to fall asleep as fast as humanly possible.

*

“Did you really kill someone?” she asks. Awake-ly.

He sighs. “Yeah. But it’s not as dramatic as it sounds.” He regrets telling her this. It didn’t make the dragon go away. Nothing will make the dragon go away. So what’s the point?

“Was it an accident or something?”

He pulls his sleeping bag tighter around him. “Or something.”

She doesn’t ask.

He doesn’t tell.

*

Jaime wakes up smushed against the side of the tent. He can feel the nylon before he opens his eyes to see it, and when he does, everything is blue. Her stupid blue tent is pressed so tightly over his face he’s shocked he didn’t suffocate to death in the night.

She’s wedged up against him. Her six-foot-a-lot body of muscle pinning him to the side of the tent. He doesn’t know what she weighs, but as he tries to wiggle enough to move her away from him with little success, he suspects it is a lot.

There’s no way in any of the seven hells that she’s still on her own sleeping mat, he fumes as he tries to make sense of what must have transpired while they slept. His limbs are held tight to his body by his sleeping bag, which is wrapped around him like a misguided cocoon. He can barely move, much less think, and the more he squirms away from her the more she slides towards him.

Jaime adds “Sleeping bags” to his list of things he hates about camping.

*

Jaime could wake her, but it is still early and he would like some time without her awake and around and whatever while he tries to figure out what he’s going to do about the dragon when he finds it.

With considerable effort he manages to unzip his sleeping bag enough to be able to move (the zippered side has shifted during the night and is mostly underneath him, but at least it’s not in the part of his sleeping bag Brienne is currently lying on top of). And after that it’s, well not _easy_ , but possible, for him to extract himself from the sleeping bag by shimmying a few inches at a time until he is able to make his escape.

*

“What are you doing?”

He looks up. “Good morning to you too.”

Brienne looks far more well-rested than he feels.

Which annoys him.

It must be nice to sleep so peacefully in the slipperiest sleeping bag known to mankind.

“Seriously Jaime,” she repeats. “What the fuck are you doing.”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he says, not stopping. It’s clear what he’s doing. He’s sharpening a stick with his pocket knife. That is what he is doing. Brienne can see exactly what he’s doing and he’d bet all of his remaining camping gear that she’s also already concluded why. So if she wants to explain to him why he’s an idiot, she may as well jump to that part of the conversation.

“Get your stuff out of the tent so we can get out of here,” Brienne says.

*

It’s day three and Jaime has had enough of hiking. He has had enough of camping. And he has most certainly had enough of Brienne.

She’s taken the lead again, setting a brisk pace though woods. He’s got an eye on the GPS to make sure she doesn’t take a wrong turn, leading them back away from the dragon to spite him. She’s made no secret of her goal for this trip: to make sure he doesn’t kill the dragon. Now they’re less than a day away.

But she’s still leading them right towards the dragon.

*

“You can’t kill a dragon with a pointy stick!” Brienne exclaims out of nowhere, hours later.

“How long have you been holding that in?” he smirks. “It’s not good to suppress your emotions like that—”

“And you can’t make your emotions disappear by pretending they’re a dragon!” Brienne says as she stops walking and turns around to face him.

“I thought you were sure the dragon wasn’t some sort of fucked-up coping mechanism?” Jaime asks, clutching his pointy stick a little tighter.

“It’s not,” Brienne says, infuriatingly sure even now. “But you think it is. But hey, it’s your life. Do whatever the fuck you want. Kill people and fuck your sister and think the dragon is just you projecting your trauma into the sky and whatever else you do in your free time. But you can’t kill a dragon with a pointy stick. And if you survive trying, the dragon is still going to be there and you’re going to have to deal with that.”

“If I…? You think… you think the dragon can kill me?”

“I think it’s been killing you for a long time,” Brienne says. “And I think that maybe part of you wants it to.”

“Yeah well,” he fires back. “I think you’re so hellbent on believing it’s a dragon that you won’t even consider the fact that we shouldn’t be able to see it at all.”

“But we can!” Brienne says. “We can see it! Nothing you do can change that!”

“Why the fuck did you even come with me? If you’re so damn sure it’s real, that I can’t kill it, why the fuck are you here?”

“I never said I thought it was real,” Brienne says. “I said it was a dragon.”

Jaime groans in frustration, fighting the urge to storm off the trail just to make a point. “Then why. Are you. Here?!”

“Because it’s not just a dragon. It’s my dragon. Mine. My whole life the world has been trying to take things from me. And you know what? Most of the time it works. People take what they want. And when they can’t, the universe does it for them. But no one could take the dragon from me. It’s mine. Just mine. Then you came along and what’s the first fucking thing you did when you knew I could see it too? You wanted to kill the dragon. You wanted to make it go away. But you can’t. You can’t. Because even if you can, I will not let you.”

“Because it’s your dragon,” Jaime says flatly.

“Yes.”

“That’s insane.”

“Says the person holding a pointy stick on a quest to slay a dragon,” she counters, turning on her heel and resuming her impressive pace through the forest.

“Says the person who walked for three days to make sure I didn’t!” he calls after her. The makeshift weapon in his hand suddenly feels more useful than it has all day. Brienne came all this way because she’s afraid he can kill the dragon. And if she believes it enough to come all this way…

He’s going to kill that fucking dragon.

He’s going to kill that fucking dragon and they’ll both be better off for it.

She’ll see.

*

They resume the stormy silence that has followed them most of the way through the woods and up the mountain.

Then Brienne stops.

Jaime walks up to where she’s standing and stops beside her.

There’s a large clearing up ahead.

A large dragon-sized clearing.

That has to be it.

*

It’s mid-afternoon.

The dragon is visible in the sky out to the west.

The large clearing in the woods is right in the spot Jaime had marked out days before.

It’s mid-afternoon and there’s nothing to do but find a place to make camp a safe distance away and wait.

*

They eat early. Brienne rinses out one of her shirts and hangs it to dry. She cooks a meal that looks far more appetizing than his own. She calmly watches him take his pointy stick out of her sight to take a few practice swings.

Brienne watches him return twenty minutes later and does not make any snide comments.

*

Jaime sits on the other side of the fire they have going and brazenly takes stock of his supplies. His dragon killing supplies. Pocket knife. The pointy stick. His headlamp.

He wishes he still had the rifle.

*

The sun sets.

The dragon gets bigger in the sky.

Jaime wonders when Brienne will make her move. He’s waiting for her to tackle him and wrestle the stick from his hands. To lecture him about his stupidity one last time. To knock him out and tie him up with the straps she uses to roll her sleeping bag.

Something.

He’s waiting for her to do something.

*

The dragon approaches.

Jaime puts the campfire out.

Brienne does not stop him.

The sky darkens.

The dragon gets closer.

Brienne doesn’t do anything but watch the dragon get closer.

And closer.

And then land, right in the clearing not a kilometre from where they sit.

They sit in silence for a few moments longer, listening to the dragon settle and still in the dark.

Brienne is the one who says, “It’s time.”

*

They walk side by side towards where the dragon is, weaving through the trees where no footpath exists. The sky is dark but the moon is bright, bright enough that he only has his headlamp on the lowest setting to see the ground in front of them.

Jaime always knew he’d be fighting the dragon in the dark. The dragon only comes back here at night. It is inevitable. He’d hoped he would be shooting the dragon in the dark, but that isn’t how it is going to be.

Jaime clutches the stick in his right hand.

At least he will have the element of surprise.

*

They’re close. He can see where the trees stop in front of them.

He sees the dark shape that can only be the dragon. It doesn’t seem to be moving, but there’s a sound low and deep and rhythmic that makes him think of sleep.

He turns off his headlamp before he looks at Brienne.

She holds her finger to her lips, as if there’s any way he hadn’t already come to the conclusion that approaching the dragon quietly is their only chance. He gives a single nod and then begins to move forward again.

He’s still waiting for her to jump him. To punch him. To stop him.

She doesn’t.

They step out from between the trees into the edge of the clearing together.

*

The dragon is equal parts monstrous and beautiful. Terrifying and astonishing. A sight to behold.

And it is enormous. Even bigger than he assumed. He always knew the dragon was big, but up close it is something else entirely. He always assumed the dragon was greyish black, but at this distance he can see the hint of purple in its colouring. Each scale on its body seems to catch the light a little differently, making the moonlight shimmer off it like the surface of a lake.

The knife in his pocket couldn’t trim the dragon’s claws. The stick he sharpened is an embarrassment. Brienne doesn’t even look over at him to silently say she told him so.

The rifle wouldn’t have made a difference either, he admits to himself as he stands in awe of the creature in front of him. This was a mistake. A huge mistake. They have to get out of here.

Brienne steps forward.

“What are you doing?” he hisses.

“I have to know,” she replies without looking back at him, still walking right towards the dragon.

Jaime takes a step forward to stop her but the dragon makes a little grunt that makes the ground beneath them tremble like an earthquake.

He stills.

Brienne takes another step forward.

“Brienne!” he whispers as loud as he dares. His grip on the sharpened stick is painfully tight. If the dragon wakes, if the dragon realizes Brienne is there, he will have to attack it. He won’t have a choice, he’ll just have to fight the dragon with his stick and his tiny knife and hope he can distract it long enough for Brienne to get to safety.

But he would rather it not come to that, so he urges Brienne to come back as forcefully as he can in hushed tones.

Brienne is still moving towards the dragon. “I have to know.”

Her hand is held out in front of her. She’s so close to the dragon. Too close. They never should have come here.

Because now she needs to know.

All her insistence that the dragon wasn’t real or fake, that it was merely a dragon…

And now she needs to know.

Jaime watches Brienne reach her hand towards the dragon.

*

Brienne’s hand is on the dragon somewhere near its ribcage.

The dragon.

Brienne’s hand is on the dragon.

For a long moment he just watches the dragon’s chest rise and fall with the unmistakable signs of life. Every breath the dragon takes moves Brienne’s hand with it. Just a little, but the movement is unmistakable.

Inhale. Exhale.

Inhale. Exhale.

Inhale. Exhale.

And the dragon is still equal parts monstrous and beautiful. Terrifying and astonishing. A sight to behold.

But the dragon is not what Jaime is focused on.

Brienne turns to look at him, her right hand still on the dragon, her eyes are shining with wonder and something he’s never seen before, something he’s never experienced before.

“Jaime,” she says. “It’s real.”

Then she offers her left hand to him.

*

Jaime can’t think.

Jaime can’t move.

The dragon is real.

Brienne can see it. Brienne can touch it. She is touching it. Right now her hand is on the dragon.

The dragon.

She says his name again.

Jaime puts his pointy stick down at his feet.

He steps forward, then stops.

Again.

And then again.

The dragon sleeps.

Unbothered by their presence.

Brienne is looking at him, silently reassuring him that it’s okay. Even as her right hand continues to move with every breath the dragon takes.

(How could it be okay? It’s a dragon. A dragon. A huge fucking dragon.)

He takes another step forward.

He reaches for her hand first as he finds himself locked in place again. Five feet from the dragon.

The living breathing dragon.

He’s not sure he’s ready to know. To know for certain that it is real.

He’s spent so long certain it wasn’t.

Even when he thought he could kill it, he was half-certain it wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be real.

Even Brienne didn’t know it was real. Not until just now.

His dragon.

Her dragon.

He keeps his hold of her hand as he steps forward and reaches up with his left hand.

He reaches up and puts his left hand beside Brienne’s.

On the dragon.

Their dragon.

Their real dragon.

Their dragon breathes.

*

Jaime does not know how long they stand there.

Their hands are side by side on the purple-black scales that shimmer in the moonlight.

Their dragon.

Their dragon.

Their dragon.

Jaime cannot believe he ever thought of it as anything less than real.

Their dragon breathes.

*

“We should go.”

“We should.”

They don’t.

For a long time they don’t.

They stay right where they are.

They leave their hands right where they are.

Their dragon breathes.

*

They should go.

They should go.

They should go.

(Their dragon breathes.)

*

By mutual agreement in a language they’ve just discovered spoken only in the clasp of their hands, the brush of her thumb against his, they lower their other hands from the dragon at the same time.

He doesn’t let go of her other hand.

(She doesn’t let go of his hand either.)

They should go.

*

Eventually they go.

*

The dragon does not stir as they back away from it, but they don’t take their eyes off it until they’re back amongst the trees just in case.

It’s much darker now than it was. Jaime reaches and turns his headlamp back on as they slowly make their way back to their campsite.

He wipes at his eyes, but stops himself before he does it again.

He doesn’t care if she knows he’s crying.

(She’s crying too. The way he is. The eyes leaking way. Not sobs. Not wails. Just tears.)

They hold hands until they get back to her tent.

*

They don’t talk about it.

The dragon that is.

Or anything.

They just get into their sleeping bags and lie there in the dark.

Quietly.

So quietly Jaime swears he can still hear the dragon breathing in the distance as he lies awake long after Brienne has fallen asleep.

*

“Jaime get up!”

“You okay?” he asks, sitting up in his sleeping bag and scrambling to escape it before he knows what’s going on.

“I’m fine,” Brienne says from the outside of the flap of the tent. “But you want to see this.”

He follows her out towards the dawn.

*

“Look,” she says, but she did not need to. It is clear what he is meant to see.

The dragon is stirring in the clearing they are overlooking. The dragon stretches its great wings and then yawns, its enormous jaw stretching wide, full of teeth, real dragon teeth that would have snapped his pointy stick in half like a piece of dry spaghetti. Teeth that could tear him clean in half if the dragon was motivated to do so.

But right now the dragon seems motivated only to begin its day, moving in a slow circle, its tail making the nearby trees sway where they stand.

Then the dragon rears and launches itself into the sky.

*

“Fuck,” Jaime breathes when he trusts himself to speak as he watches the dragon get smaller and smaller in the sky, still feeling the force of the downdraft from the giant wings, still seeing the dragon in his mind’s eye when it took flight right in front of them.

“Fuck,” Brienne echoes, all awe and wonder once again.

They stand there together for a long while before they go back to their campsite to start packing up.

*

They make better time walking down the mountain. His bear canister is lighter but his backpack is not. Even without his tent, he swears his backpack is just getting heavier and the mosquitos more vicious. It’s as if they know he is fleeing from this place as quickly as his blistered feet will carry him.

But even with his mounting discomfort, time passes much easier between them. They talk more in the first few hours of their hike back than they ever have, and when they fall into silence as they walk it is a comfortable one.

*

When they stop for the night they both look up to watch the dragon return to its roost from where they are sprawled in the grassy clearing.

The dragon is asleep but they are not. They’re lying outside of Brienne’s tent watching the stars. Jaime has never seen the stars so clearly before. He has never taken the time to look.

Brienne points out all the constellations she knows. One of them is a dragon and he thinks she’s pulling his leg but there is nothing but sincerity in her face when he lifts his head to look over at her in the starlight.

Jaime lies back down and follows Brienne’s patient instructions until he can see the dragon in the stars and he decides camping isn’t all bad.

*

It is especially hot the next day and when they pass a particularly inviting bank of river in the middle of the afternoon Brienne drops her backpack and peels off her shirt before Jaime has time to ask why.

Jaime ditches his backpack and most of his clothes and joins her in the water with not a care in the world about keeping to a schedule.

*

The last night they do the required maneuvers to get them both into their sleeping bags and then lie side by side in the dark by the light of her flashlight and laugh about how her tent was definitely not designed for two people of their size.

“No one will believe we both fit,” Brienne yawns.

Jaime pulls out his phone and takes a terrible selfie of the two of them to prove it.

“I’ll send it to you when I have service,” Jaime says, frowning at the lack of bars. “As evidence.”

“Please don’t,” Brienne says with as straight a face as she can manage. “And besides, you can’t even tell we’re in the tent.”

She’s right. The second picture, which she takes, with them both on the verge of cracking up as they try to get enough of them both in the picture to prove they are, in fact, in her tent, is much better.

*

When Jaime wakes up and finds himself nestled between her and the side of the tent once again he closes his eyes and enjoys the extra warmth she provides in the chilly morning air. He dozes until Brienne wakes and sits up while still in her sleeping bag like a cartoon mummy rising from the dead.

Camping definitely isn’t all bad.

*

They alternate between conversation and companionable silence as they hike that morning and before long they are at the trail sign that announces they’re only a kilometre from the parking lot.

*

When they get back to his car Jaime flings his backpack into the trunk with half a mind to leave it in the bushes instead so he never has to go camping again. Brienne doesn’t seem to be fighting the same internal battle as she puts her backpack beside his, though he notes her smile when she stretches her arms towards the sky without her backpack before she gets into the car.

*

“I’m stopping at the first place I can eat a meal that I didn’t carry in a bear canister for days before eating it,” he warns her as he turns on the air conditioning to the minor hurricane setting.

“Fine by me,” Brienne says from the passenger seat as she rolls down the window to free a bug that followed them into the car.

*

The first place they see is a waffle house. And not even an actual Waffle House. It’s a Waffle Hut. But the sign promises all day breakfast, which is food, which means it’ll do. Jaime turns into the parking lot.

It’s early afternoon and there’s almost no one there, which is good because he is certain he and Brienne are not up to the standards of hygiene that would allow them in close proximity to other people. The hostess is nice enough about the fact that they walked through the woods for days without a shower before choosing to eat at this fine establishment. She seats them in a booth in the far corner as far away as they can get from the scattering of other diners just in case.

*

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Brienne says after they have ordered and both made separate trips to the restroom to wash the layers of sunscreen and bug spray and grime from their hands.

“Just one thing?” Jaime asks as he absently scratches at a mosquito bite on his wrist.

“You’ve been able to see the dragon since you were a kid?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you tell me you killed someone when you were a teenager? If you could already see the dragon, why would you think… ”

“Oh,” Jaime says. “That.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

He knows he doesn’t have to tell her. He doesn’t have to tell her. He is surprised to find he wants to. He wants her to know. “I was an intern at—”

“You’re Jaime Lannister,” she says, her blue eyes suddenly bright with recognition and it occurs to him that she spent the better part of the week in the wilderness with him and didn’t even know his last name.

“The man you killed was...” she says. “And you actually did kill him?”

There’s a hint of the looks he’d gotten used to, back in the immediate aftermath, when it was all over the news and the tabloids were trying to get the name Kingslayer to stick, but beyond that there’s curiosity with a surprising lack of judgement on her face.

“He was going to set fire to an old apartment building. Insurance fraud,” Jaime provides, when he sees her next question form in her head. “It was full of people. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care and he was going to... Anyway,” he shakes himself away from the memory of Aerys’ face as he explained how flammable these old buildings were, how a small accident could set the whole place ablaze. “I stopped him.”

“You were alone with him?” Brienne asks, though he can tell she remembers enough of the scandal to know the official details.

Jaime nods once. He had known the internship was prestigious when he got it, but he’d had no idea what it would mean to be Aerys Targaryen’s body man for the summer. He’d been alone with him. He’d been alone with him and then he’d killed him. And then Jaime had been alone.

Their server returns with several plates of food and lays them in front of them. Jaime is fairly certain he has never seen anything look quite as delicious as the stack of pancakes in front of him.

“Did… did the dragon change afterwards?” Brienne asks as she reaches for the syrup in the middle of the table.

“No,” Jaime says. “The dragon didn’t change. It was just still there.”

“The dragon didn’t change when Galladon died either,” Brienne replies. “But it was still there, thank the seven.”

He’s not sure which of them looks out the window first, but they both do.

The dragon is still there.

Jaime looks back at Brienne and smiles at the way she’s still watching the dragon before tucking into his pancakes.

*

“You can take a left here,” Brienne says as they’re getting close to their gym. “And then the next right.”

He does.

He pulls over where she tells him to. In front of her apartment building.

The dragon soars overhead, throwing her into shadow for a moment as she grabs her backpack from the trunk.

“I’ll see you around,” Brienne says.

*

Jaime hauls his gear and drops it just inside the front door to his condo and then immediately begins to rid himself of his hiking clothes as he walks, intending to collect them later to humanely destroy them at his earliest convenience.

Then Jaime takes the longest shower of his life.

*

When Jaime bothers to check his phone there are several more messages from Cersei from a few days ago when she was desperate to see him, followed by furious silence when he did not explain why she could not find him when she wanted him. He does not bother to reply.

There’s also a message from Brienne, making sure he didn’t drown himself in the shower in his eagerness to wash the forest from his skin.

That message he replies to.

*

Jaime falls into his bed and lets out a blissful sigh as he starfishes on top of the plush comforter amongst his pillows. He vows to never take the overwhelming pleasure of a supportive mattress to sleep on for granted again.

*

Jaime wakes to the sound of urgent knocking at his door. He pulls on clean boxers and a white t-shirt before he answers.

“Where were you?” Cersei demands as she sweeps into his condo, as elegant as if she’s on her way to the symphony.

Cersei is not here to fuck him. That much would be clear even if he didn’t know he missed the window this month. She still thinks he hasn’t noticed the pattern. She’s still trying to pretend she just wants to see him when she _can_ and that she’s upset because he wasn’t there for her when she decided she _could_ see him.

“Vacation,” Jaime says. “I got out of the city for a few days.”

“How could you leave without telling me? Right when I was—” she stops herself.

“When you were _what_ Cersei?”

This is the closest they have ever come to discussing it.

“When I was _free_ ,” Cersei replies, artificial breeziness back in her tone. “You know what Robert’s schedule is like. You know what Robert is like. There are only certain times I can see you. And you weren’t there.”

“No,” Jaime agrees. “I wasn’t there.”

“No you weren’t,” Cersei says, “And now we have to wait before I’m likely to be free again.”

“You seem to be free enough now,” Jaime says lightly. “And I don’t go back to work for another two days.”

“I’m not in the mood,” she says, all delicate fury and wildfire.

“No,” Jaime agrees. “You won’t be in the mood for another, three weeks or so?”

“Jaime.”

He’s heard warnings in her voice countless times before, but never like this.

*

Cersei does not ask how long he’s known, or how long he’s suspected.

She does not ask him anything at this moment. Just like she never asked him, not once, if what she was trying to do was something he wanted as well.

Cersei did not ask.

Cersei does not ask.

Even now.

*

If Cersei will not ask him, Jaime will tell her.

“There will be no children,” he says.

*

“What did you say?”

“There will be no children. Not for us.”

“How can you know that?” she hisses.

“Because I know.”

“How?”

“Because I had a vasectomy.”

She hits him hard across the face.

“When.”

“Cersei…”

“When!”

“Cersei—”

She hits him again. He deserves it.

“Don’t,” she warns. He has never seen her so angry. Her hands are shaking. Her voice is shaking. “Tell me when.”

He tells her when.

And then he lets her hit him again.

*

“The married woman is my twin sister,” Jaime says before he’s even sat down in his therapist’s office for their scheduled appointment. “Her name is Cersei. We’ve been fucking around since before I can remember. But this week we stopped.”

Then he tells his therapist why.

They were nineteen. They’d been fucking for years at that point. She called him and told him she was late. Only by a week. It might be nothing. It was probably nothing. But she was late. She said that she would deal with it, whatever it was. She said not to worry about it. But visceral horror consumed him at the thought that she might be… That he might then become a… Somehow he’d never considered that that was a possibility. He didn’t sleep again until Cersei confirmed she wasn’t pregnant. (He still does not know if she ever was. She never told him. Even when he asked. All he knows is that she wasn’t the next time she called him.) Cersei dealt with it. And so did Jaime. Jaime dealt with it to make sure they would never have to deal with it again.

He never expected her to start saying things about the children they could have after she married Robert. How beautiful they would be. She kept talking about how beautiful their children would be. His children. His and hers. Their children. She never directly said she was trying to get pregnant, never. Even when it became obvious she was. Her timing was impeccable, like clockwork. As if there was no way he would ever catch on to what she was doing. She hated when he came anywhere but inside her. The fights they would have if he pulled out… The fights they would have.

She never asked if he wanted to father her children. She never… she never asked. She never asked if he wanted to. She never asked if he could. And by that point he’d already made sure he couldn’t.

“She never asked me about it,” Jaime says, startled by how his voice shakes as he says the words out loud. “She never asked about anything.”

*

It’s early Wednesday morning. Early enough that it is still dark out. Jaime is eating breakfast, sitting on the side of his kitchen table that lets him look out the windows towards the ocean.

He sips at his coffee and waits until he sees the dragon rise from the mountains and soar out over the water.

Now he can begin his day.

*

It’s Thursday when he texts Brienne to ask her if he can join her at the gym the next time she goes.

After their workout they linger on the sidewalk and talk for a long time, sparing only the occasional glance in the dragon’s direction.

*

Work is work. He doesn’t hate it, but he doesn’t love it. He has another appointment with his therapist this afternoon. He’s not looking forward to it, but he’s not dreading it either.

The dragon flies past his office window and Jaime wonders if it’s on its way to fly past Brienne.

He likes that thought.

He stands to go over to the window in his office. Pulls out his phone and takes a picture of the dragon. It’s not a great picture, but he sends it to Brienne anyway.

A few minutes later his phone buzzes.

Brienne has sent him a picture of the dragon in return.

*

By the end of the week they’ve escalated from simply taking pictures of the dragon to taking selfies with the dragon in the background. They are both quick to point out the other’s artistic shortcomings when it comes to dragon selfies by their ever-evolving judging criteria.

They already could fill a small art gallery with their collection.

*

It’s Thursday and Jaime is in his therapist’s office. He does not want to be here today. He is cagey and defensive and exhausted. He does not want to be here today.

But he is here.

*

_I’d say that’s a 4._

_A four?!_ Jaime texts Brienne back from where he’s stepped away from a business dinner. He adds a string of emojis to express his outrage at this injustice.

His selfie with the dragon he’d sent her earlier was definitely worth more than a four. Most of his face was in the frame and so was the dragon and neither were blurry. You could definitely tell it was a dragon and not a wonky bird or a fucked-up bat. That was worth more than a four.

But then Brienne sends him a picture of her and the dragon. It’s sunset and she’s down by the water and the dragon is flying over her shoulder and she’s smiling like she knows she just won the dragon selfie challenge for the day. Which she has. She has definitely won.

Jaime saves the picture and doesn’t mind losing at all.

*

It occurs to him after at least a dozen of such selfies have been exchanged that he could show one of the pictures with the dragon in it to someone. To see if they can see the dragon at all.

Not his therapist. Not someone who would think it Means Something no matter what. But someone.

The guy who works at the sandwich shop across from his office would tell him the truth.

But every time Jaime considers it, he doesn’t.

Brienne can see the dragon.

And so can he.

It’s their dragon after all.

That’s enough.

*

He goes to the gym. Brienne isn’t there today, which is a bummer. He’d been hoping to run into her today. It’s been too many days since he saw her.

He works out in the basement for a while before he goes upstairs to run on a treadmill in front of the window.

He watches the dragon fly across the horizon.

And then texts Brienne to see how she’s doing.

*

(Brienne is fine, she’s just been picking up some extra shifts, some of them at strange hours so her gym routine is all thrown off. They arrange to workout together on Saturday and when his therapist asks him what he’s looking forward to during his appointment that is what Jaime talks about. He gets to see Brienne this weekend.)

*

Jaime absentmindedly doodles a dragon on a post-it note one rainy Wednesday afternoon at the office.

Inspiration strikes right before he is about to crumple it up and toss it in the recycling bin.

He takes a selfie with the post-it note dragon and sends it to Brienne.

(She docks him points for the lack of a real dragon, but the score she gives him is generous.)

*

It’s therapy day. Again.

He’s only been here five minutes but he can’t do this today.

He stands up, intending to leave, to accept his fate. To surrender.

He knows he’s fucked up beyond repair. Beyond hope. He knows it. His therapist knows it. Cersei knows it. (She relishes in knowing it.) So what difference does it make if he sits here every week and talks about things his therapist already knows?

YES he killed a man when he was seventeen and NO he doesn’t feel guilty about it but YES sometimes he still wakes up in a cold sweat but it’s because he dreamt that he didn’t kill Aerys when he had the chance and all those people burned to death and YES he fucked his sister his whole life and NO he doesn’t remember how it started or when it started and he doesn’t remember it being a choice and YES he had a vasectomy when he was nineteen and NO he didn’t tell Cersei and YES she spent the last few years trying to have his child with increasing desperation and NO she never asked if that’s what he wanted and HE DOESN’T KNOW if he wanted to be a father or might ever want to be a father because he never had the chance to think about it as a possibility outside that single terrifying week where he might have been the fuckup who got his sister pregnant so he just DIDN’T and YES Cersei hit him sometimes but it wasn’t that big a deal and NO he’s never been with anyone else because YES he was in love with Cersei his whole life, that was the one thing he was certain of, that he was in love with her and Jaime was so sure that was love that he has no idea what to call it NOW.

And gods, how Jaime wishes he didn’t care.

But Jaime cares.

That’s the tragedy of it.

Jaime cares.

He sits back down.

*

It’s Friday and he runs into Brienne at the gym in the morning and it makes his whole day.

*

He feels particularly trapped in his office this Monday afternoon. The weather is far too pleasant. He pulls out his phone and texts Brienne.

_It’s supposed to be nice this weekend. Want to go for a hike? I’ve heard there are trails nearby._

She replies by sending him a link to local trails.

He doesn’t even click on it before he messages her back: _When?_

_Sunday afternoon?_

He sends her the thumbs up emoji.

She sends him a dragon emoji. Then follows it up with: _Though to my knowledge the dragon does not frequent that conservation area._

He smiles before he replies: _Maybe the dragon will join us._

_We can hope._

*

It’s Sunday and Brienne is leading the way. She’s about five paces in front of him and they’ve fallen into comfortable silence as they make their way along the trail. It’s a short loop through the woods less than 30 minutes outside of the city and he was right about the weather. It’s nice enough that they are far from the only ones out here.

“My sister and I…” shit, he doesn’t even know what words to use. Broke up? Stopped fucking in secret? Imploded? “It’s over,” he says.

“Oh,” Brienne says, still leading them through the woods without altering her pace. The trail marker to their left indicates the trail goes to the left. They go left.

“Can I tell you why?” he asks.

“Yeah of course,” she pauses to glance over her shoulder at him. “You don’t need to ask my permission to talk about what’s going on with you.”

But he does. She didn’t sign up for this. This disaster of a person following her through the woods on a Sunday afternoon because they can both see the same dragon. “You’re not the one I pay Seven-knows how many dollars an hour to listen to my shit.”

“No,” she agrees. “But I am your friend.”

That hits him in ways he wasn’t prepared for. Jaime doesn’t remember the last time someone said that to him and meant it.

*

Jaime tells Brienne why. He’s relieved he doesn’t have to see her face as he talks as they continue to walk through the woods. He tells her about not knowing when it started, about the pregnancy scare when they were teenagers, about the vasectomy he gotten thinking he’d solved everything for them, about how desperately Cersei had tried to have his children these last few years, how she never asked him if he wanted to or if he could, how he’d never told her what he’d done, how she never asked him about any number of important things…

He tells Brienne that he told Cersei that they would never have children together. He doesn’t tell her how Cersei reacted. He doesn’t want Brienne to have to know the details. Just that Cersei knows now. Because he told her. And that it is over.

Whatever that was, it is over.

“Jaime…” Brienne says, stopping on the trail and turning around to look at him. “Are you okay?”

He laughs in surprise at how earnestly she asks such a loaded question, at how he has no idea if he even knows what okay feels like to compare to.

“Not really,” he says, and gods he didn’t expect it to feel so freeing to answer honestly, to not just say he’s okay as a reflex. “No.” he adds, more definitively. He’s not okay. He’s still a long way from okay. But maybe he’ll get there. Maybe he’ll get there and she’ll still be around to see it. Then he adds, “Are you?”

The half-smile on her face is so relatable it aches. “Not really,” she says, “But we’re not talking about me right now.”

“We can,” he says. “If you want.”

“Jaime,” she says as if she means to point out that he just told her something horrifying and she doesn’t know what to say because what could she say and not to change the subject or whatever.

But then she says, “Maybe later.” and Jaime hopes she means it.

*

“Fuck you and your mosquito immunity,” Jaime says as he kills another one too late to have stopped it from biting him. He reaches for his bug spray for what must be the millionth time today.

Brienne looks over at him and grins. “You’re the one who suggested a walk through the woods.”

“I forgot about your mosquito thing,” he grumbles as he shoves his bug spray into his backpack and takes a sip of water as he looks at her bare muscular mosquito-bite-free arms. “I didn’t even know that was possible before I met you. Honestly, what the fuck.”

“Sorry,” she says, still grinning at him, obviously not sorry at all.

*

“It’s been a year since my friend died,” Brienne says when they stand on top of the large boulder that serves as a lookout near the end of the trail. “Last Tuesday. It’s been a year.”

“I’m sorry.” The view is pretty incredible, the waterfalls in the distance in particular, but Jaime keeps looking at Brienne.

“Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”

*

They stop for food on the way back. The place is more glamorous than the Waffle Hut, but not by much.

But when their meals arrive Jaime is fairly certain that everything tastes better after questing through the woods with Brienne.

*

After they are back in the car Jaime steals glances at Brienne as she watches the dragon flying in the distance out the passenger side window.

By the time Jaime pulls over in front of Brienne’s apartment building to drop her off he feels lighter than he has in weeks.

*

He and Brienne run into each other at the gym more frequently than they used to. Sometimes they grab food together afterwards. Sometimes he walks her home. Sometimes she walks him home.

Sometimes they just send increasingly silly pictures of the dragon to each other when their schedules don’t overlap.

*

It’s a lot of work to sit in his therapists office week after week.

Sometimes it feels like progress.

Sometimes it feels futile.

Sometimes it feels like nothing at all.

But he shows up. Every week he shows up.

And every week he steps out of his therapists office and looks up and sees the dragon in the sky.

It doesn’t bother him the way it used to.

*

Jaime gets out of a meeting near the end of a long day and checks his phone. There’s a message from Brienne.

_I’m going to be at the gym tonight. You coming?_

He grins as he replies. _See you there._

*

After their workout she walks him home (“It’s my turn,” she insists) and they loiter outside of his building for close to an hour.

He almost invites her up every other sentence as they stand there discussing the finer points of medieval folk songs, but he doesn’t.

When she eventually says she has to be going and is on her way, he goes upstairs and watches the dragon in the darkening sky until it has returned home for the night and Brienne has texted him that she has gotten home safely.

*

_I’m going to be out of town for the next week_ , Jaime texts Brienne from the back of a cab on the way to the airport, _In case you start worrying about where the dragon is._

_Vacation?_

_I wish. Business trip._

A last minute business trip. That isn’t how he wants to spend this week. But that’s how it’s going to be.

After he stops texting Brienne he calls his therapist’s office to change his session to a phone call instead of an in-person appointment.

*

The dragon flies out with him.

Jaime stares out the window at the dragon for most of the duration of the flight, watching the effortless way the dragon moves through the air. The dragon isn’t struggling to keep pace with the plane. Jaime wonders how much faster it could go, how much further. Jaime wonders how he never wondered these sorts of things before.

Jaime finds himself wishing Brienne was here. He can picture it so clearly, the two of them watching the dragon and talking about it in coded language so the other people in business class wouldn’t suspect.

*

He sends Brienne a selfie of him and the dragon him through the plane window.

She gives it an 8.7.

*

The dragon sees him to his hotel, its shadow overhead when he’s in the cab from the airport, and then moving across the skyline as the great winged beast escorts him from above.

When he gets to his nondescript room on the ninth floor the dragon is swooping between the unfamiliar city buildings.

At least Jaime will have company as he endures a week of meetings.

*

When Jaime leaves the office on Tuesday he looks up and sees nothing but sky. He looks around.

No dragon.

*

When he wakes up on Wednesday there’s a message from Brienne with a picture of the dragon back in King’s Landing.

It seems the dragon is no more enthralled by the quarterly earnings report than Jaime is.

*

By Thursday Jaime misses the dragon. It’s been ages since he went this long without seeing the dragon. He’s grown accustomed to the dragon.

But more than the dragon, he misses Brienne. He misses Brienne so much. He almost messages her that sentiment more than once throughout the day, but maybe she knows anyway because she tells him when she’s on her way home and asks if he wants to talk.

They speak on the phone for more than an hour. Brienne is walking home from the gym, and then cooking dinner, and then eating dinner, and the whole time she is teasing him about the dragon finding his trip boring enough to leave him there alone.

He points out that the dragon used to fly between Tarth and Casterly Rock all the time. She points out that the last time she went home to visit her father after she moved to King’s Landing the dragon had stayed around Tarth the whole week.

As they discuss the merits of a sunbathing dragon Jaime thinks of going somewhere with Brienne. The two of them getting out of King’s Landing together. He thinks about that a lot as Brienne tells him about her week. The two of them together somewhere, able to have these types of conversation in person somewhere more scenic than the lobby of the gym.

Let the dragon keep them company wherever they choose to go.

*

_The dragon’s been circling the airport for hours_ , the message from Brienne reads, _Weren’t you supposed to land an hour ago?_

_Flight was delayed,_ Jaime replies from the airport terminal where he’s still waiting to board his flight, _It’ll be a few hours still._

_I wish I could tell the dragon that_ , Brienne says, _I think it’s waiting up for you._

Jaime is amused by the idea of being able to tell the dragon not to wait up for him until long after he is finally able to board his flight.

*

When Jaime arrives in King's Landing it is well past midnight and the dragon is still circling around the airport like a plane waiting for clearance to land.

It isn’t until he’s back home and looks out the window does he see the dragon finally heading back to its mountain for the night.

*

He makes a point to find out when Brienne is free this weekend first thing the next morning. That way he gets to see her before the week starts again and it’s much harder to coordinate. Even though they texted the whole time he was away, he wants to see her.

He finds himself wanting to see her a lot lately.

*

It’s Monday.

Jaime’s sitting on a bench down by the waterfront, watching the dragon drink from the lake on the far shore. Soon it will make its way back towards the mountain for the night. He likes watching it return to where it rests at the end of the day. Where he and Brienne once stood side by side and touched the impossible truth in front of them.

His phone vibrates, interrupting his thoughts. He pulls out his phone.

A text message from Cersei.

She hasn’t sent him a message since the last time he saw her.

He opens the message.

She’s pregnant.

She’s pregnant and it is not his.

Because it cannot be his.

Because they haven’t had sex in months.

Because he had a vasectomy.

Because she hates him.

Because.

Because because because.

He stares at his phone, letting it sink in.

Cersei is pregnant.

And it’s not his.

He lets his phone slip out of his hand as he trembles with relief.

*

It is not as hard as he thought it would be to tell his therapist about Cersei when their session rolls around. That Cersei is pregnant. And it’s not his.

They talk about it. And when his therapist asks how he feels about it he finds it is easy to answer. No, he did not want to father Cersei’s children.

Not when he was nineteen.

Not now.

He didn’t want that.

Then his therapist asks, “What do you want?”

*

Jaime struggles to answer in the moment. In all the moments that follow. Jaime thinks about that question a lot.

(He texts Brienne from the elevator on his way out of there. She’s not free until next Friday, but there’s a movie coming out that they both want to see and when she agrees to see it with him Jaime types _It’s a date_ before he erases it and types something else instead.)

*

(Jaime wants it to be a date.)

*

Jaime wants it to be a date. He wants to date Brienne. He really wants to date Brienne. He wonders if she would agree to it…

*

Brienne sends him another selfie. The dragon’s wings look like they’re coming out on either side of her head and she’s laughing, like she caught a glimpse of how silly it looked as she was trying to get the dragon in frame behind her and couldn’t contain herself.

He gives the photograph the elusive ten and then she sends him another one.

This one is a blurry image of her half out of frame with the dragon equally out of focus in the distance behind her. Her eyes are wide with alarm and he recognizes the look of someone about to topple to the ground. Her caption confirms his suspicions.

He gives that photograph an eleven.

*

They run into each at the gym on Sunday. She’s on her way out as he’s on his way in. He knows she has to go to work and he knows they can’t stop and chat for long but he’s glad they stop for a couple of minutes to talk.

They confirm that they’re still game for the movie on Friday.

He watches her walk away and confirms to himself for at least the twelfth time this week that he really wants it to be a date.

*

He runs on the treadmill and watches the dragon do its thing out the window and thinks about Brienne.

He’s never asked anyone out. People have asked him out over the years, but he’s always politely declined. He has no idea how to do this. Not when they’ve been friends the way they have been for months now.

At the very least he knows it feels too late to try and make their movie outing into an actual date. He doesn’t want to text her before Friday to ask her out, and if they do happen to run into each other before then (it’s always possible that they might see each other in passing at the gym again), he doesn’t relish the idea of trying to ask her out on the concrete steps or in the dingy lobby or in the space between the doors to the change rooms where they’ve stood and talked after their workouts all sweaty and gross for longer than is reasonable.

Jaime adjusts the speed and runs a little faster.

He’ll have to figure something out.

*

Jaime is watching the dragon fly back to its mountain Wednesday evening when inspiration finally strikes.

*

“I have a few vacation days I need to take soon. I was wondering if you want to come see the dragon with me again,” Jaime says as they emerge from the movie theatre back into the real world Friday night. He’s been thinking about it for days. For weeks maybe, though not as concretely. About going back to where they saw the dragon together. “I’ll buy a new tent.”

“Why?” she asks. “I didn’t get the impression you loved camping.”

Jaime grins. “Some parts were more enjoyable than others.”

“And which parts were those? The shower when you got home?”

“Oh gods yes,” he says, tipping his head back to better relish the memory. “That was the best shower.”

She laughs, then turns serious. “You don’t have to keep hanging out with me just because we can both see the dragon.”

“What?”

“I just… We can both see the dragon. That doesn’t mean… You don’t have to hang out with me because we can both see it. I’d understand.”

“Understand what?” Jaime asks, not understanding at all.

“Nothing,” Brienne says. “It’s nothing.”

“Okay,” he says, determined not to pry. Brienne already looks mortified she brought it up. Whatever it was. “See you at the gym tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Brienne nods, looking up at the dragon and not at him. “If you want.”

*

Jaime mulls it over when he gets home.

He’d been so sure that was the best way to ask her out. Or pre-ask her out. Once they’re back in the woods together… It will be easier to tell her how he feels. It will be easier to ask her if maybe…

He can’t stop thinking about how she looked when she turned to him and said the dragon was real. He can’t stop thinking about how much he wanted to kiss her then. About how much he wants to kiss her now, now that he understands he wanted to kiss her then.

*

They meet at the gym on Saturday.

Jaime is waiting outside for her.

“I didn’t ask you to go camping with me just because you can see the dragon,” Jaime says as soon as they have exchanged greetings. Brienne looks at him and he amends. “Not the second time anyway.”

She nods but doesn’t quite meet his eyes.

“I want to go with you. Dragon or not,” he watches her, hoping he is being clear enough. “I’m not hanging out with you because you can see the dragon.”

“Yeah,” Brienne nods, still not quite looking at him. “I just… Forget it. It’s nothing. I know. I know.”

He gets the feeling she doesn’t. Not entirely. The first guy who asked her out did it to win a bet. That’s what she told him…

“We don’t have to go camping. We don’t have to go see the dragon or take selfies with it or talk about it ever again,” Jaime says. “But even if we never mention the dragon again, I’ll still want to spend time with you.”

“Okay,” Brienne says.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, but she’s almost smiling at him this time. Then she opens the door to the gym and beckons him inside.

*

By the end of their workout they’ve made plans to go see the dragon as soon as they can both get the time off.

Jaime can’t wait to go camping with her again.

He can’t wait to see the dragon with her again.

He can’t wait to star-gaze and go swimming and hiking and be away from the entire rest of his life with her again.

He knows he still hasn’t quite asked her out, but he’s getting closer.

He promises himself that by the time they are on their way back down the mountain he will have told her what he needs to tell her and asked her what he wants to ask her.

*

He books the time off work and then he waits and in the meantime he goes to work and he goes to therapy and he and Brienne go the gym together a couple of times and one of the times they go out for dinner afterwards and it’s not a date but maybe one day soon he will ask her and maybe she’ll say yes…

*

He knows she might say no. If he asks Brienne out she might say no. If he asks to kiss her she might say no. Perhaps even probably will say no. She knows about him. She knows about Cersei and about Aerys and about everything really. She has plenty of reasons to say no.

But he’s determined to ask her anyway.

Because there is a chance… there’s a chance she’ll say something else.

And he has to know.

*

He texts Brienne from the camping supply store to ask if she needs anything. She doesn’t, but she reminds him to buy twice as much bug spray as he thinks he’ll need.

The first thing he picks out is a better sleeping pad but after that he turns to the tents. He ends up buying one that they will both be able to sleep in comfortably but finds himself hoping they end up in hers instead.

*

They meet at the gym again on Wednesday and after their workout they linger in the lobby together waiting for the rain to let up. They leave for their camping trip the day after tomorrow and they’re comparing notes about what last-minute things they may have forgotten to pack while joking about hoping the rain gives up before they’re out in the woods for several days.

But the longer they stall the darker the sky becomes and the thicker the rain that falls. Both the television mounted above the reception desk and their phones confirm that the downpour is likely to last all night. They both live close enough that calling a cab feels stupid, so with a shrug of acceptance they push the doors open to brave the storm together.

Within a few steps it is clear that the amount of rain hitting them is not nearly as torrential as it is down the street.

*

They look up at the same time.

The dragon flies in a tight circle overhead, its great wings shielding them from the rain.

Then they look at one another and laugh and laugh and laugh at the glorious absurdity of it all.

At their giant scaly umbrella, doing its best to protect them from the worst of the storm.

The dragon’s best efforts in this regard are not keeping them dry, not exactly, but that only makes it funnier as they stand there together, too stunned to do more than look at each other getting progressively more soaked as the dragon glides imperfectly above them.

Brienne’s eyes are shining with joy as she cackles and stretches out her hand to the side, trying to measure the difference the dragon is making, even as the rain flattens her hair to her forehead as she looks up.

Then she grabs his wrist and pulls him to step with her as she moves to the left so they’re better protected from the rain by the dragon above.

*

Staying under the dragon takes effort and they don’t always agree on which way is the right way to go, but they don’t let go of each other’s hands as they look up and try to centre themselves beneath their dragon.

And it is hilarious and ridiculous and wonderful to be staring up at the sky above as they move to try and stay beneath their dragon, tugging on each other’s arms and laughing when they disagree about the ideal way to move and find themselves jerking back towards each other in the puddles, off-balance and elated.

Brienne is soaked to the skin, as is he. Their dragon is doing its best but their mythical beast of an umbrella is no match for the storm. The rainwater is cold and his clothes are clinging to his skin and the wind is making him shiver but Brienne’s eyes are bright with joy and her hand is warm in his.

And Jaime wants to kiss her.

He had all these ideas in his head about how he would ask her. The two of them alone in the mountains again. Seeing the dragon together again. Watching the stars and the dragon. Him telling her he’d wanted to kiss her then. Since then. Every moment since then.

But right now they’ve got their gym bags slung over their shoulder and the dragon is acting as their umbrella and he can’t wait that long if now is a possibility.

He stops but he does not let go of Brienne’s hand. She’s still looking up at the dragon and when she moves to stay under it he doesn’t move with her. She stops and turns to look at him as the dragon banks and circles so they’re under its wingspan once again.

“Brienne, can I kiss you?”

“What?” she asks, as if she has misheard him. As if the sound of the rain could have obstructed the meaning from his words.

“I want to kiss you.”

“Jaime…” she’s not looking at him and she’s not looking at the dragon either.

“I want to kiss you. I’ve wanted to kiss you for ages,” he says. The dragon circles above them and for a moment they are fully shielded from the pouring rain. “Can I kiss you?”

She holds his hand a little tighter before she looks at him and says, “Yes.”

So Jaime kisses her.

Their dragon continues to do its best to shelter them from the storm when they don’t stop.


End file.
